Torch

At first I did not notice it. After all, I was covered in clothing. Even my fingers: protected by the gloves. The ends were unusually warm, but what could I have noticed in a race against the snow that was approaching? That's how it started. My feet began to feel in a strange way, smaller as minutes went on by. Probably it's because of this of traveling so tightened on the subway. Winter doesn't help.

I went to where the escalator was and waited until I could get on it.

After walking some blocks, I met one of my classmates, to whom I did not see in years. For a moment, we relived certain small things, irrelevant ones that however, meant a lot to us. Anyway, it felt good. We laughed, we talked a bit more. He told me he was in a bit of a hurry but that he was happy to see me. We agreed to communicate again someday, it would be a spontaneous meeting this time, though it would be planned this time.

I got home. It was then when I encountered a kind of wax in my shoes. I thought that it was a bit of sweat. Neither did I feel the lack that would have caused astonishment in most of people. Or at least it didn't hurt. That night, I had dinner and I went to bed without any major inconvenient.

Today in the morning, it was harder to put on the coat. The wax had extended by the edges of the bed. What a rare thing. I don't think I should worry. Maybe my arms seemed a bit short. I always have been someone that could not brag of her height, perhaps it was a slip of perception to think that...

People watch me. My steps feel strange. It's not their sound, no. I dismiss a series of thoughts that start to unchain in a matter of seconds. Everyone seems to hide their faces, but their eyes. The mere existence of cold and the wind scare the people who surround me. But there's something else. A reason that makes this different. The floor covered in white is the motive of laughter and entertainment for some of the children in the streets. Snowballs and snowmen. If only liked it, I could be able to understand. I confess that, anyway, I enjoy being part of that happiness, even as a witness.

I see a little black dot in the sleeve of my jacket. At best, it's a hole. Nothing that couldn't be fixed as soon as I am back. Mist? To this height from the floor? Impossible. People start to stop walking. Some look at me carefully. Others, scared, choose to look out of their corner's eyes. All of this makes me feel very uncomfortalbe. My feet... vapor comes from my feet! I seek a place to hide desperately as the flames eat the fabric that covers me. Smoke branches, I am like a tree of fire. Nothing hurts. I can't scream. Or I decide not to.

I am the center of attention and I must know what will happen with me... if I will be as the stars or I will come back in ashes.

IV (On relevance)

The imprevisibility of the significance of events in a person's life leads to a constant indifference or a meticulously planned storing of otherwise relatively unimportant facts.

3

Memory is a double edged sword. People forget but still would want to remember selections of what their life was like. What they thnik has shaped them best. It might betray you, life could either look more beautiful or more miserable than it really was.

Memory is the weapon of subjectivity. It does not shape reliable criticism, in Borges' mind.

Ut nihil non iisdem verbis redderetur auditum

2

Listening to classical music can open your mind in new manners. The unpredictability of the progressions, the lack of earworm choruses with easy rhymes, the swininging notes that unexpectedly fade into silence. Wildly, a new experience in the form of what's conventionally known as sophistication, is able to break all your schemes.

A reminder to surrender to the need of writing out impressions. Like small, furious brushes over a canvas that has never been touched by a human hand. I can ruin it again, since nobody is here to see it. A rambling of sentimentalism. Or merely a pretension with no goals. Either way, an unknown path is mine to be stepped on, carefully.

1

Because it's easy to fall into misconceptions, I've decided I will stop writing as if I had an audience at all. And what has to happen, will come into action. Or words.

This will be the space for the world as I see it, product of impressions. My own journal. If anyone decides to look at this, nothing will happen.

I underestimated the importance of sudden thoughts.

I reject the idea of art as an ornament of whatever comes into my pockets.

I will find beauty in the most unexpected places.